2-973-011 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Waukesha, Wis., Hygeia Springs, between 1880 and 1899. Hygeia Spring, first advertised in 1869, is notable for its role in the Great Pipeline Battle. In 1891, James E. McElroy of Kansas City developed a scheme to lay a pipeline to the 1893 Columbia Exposition in Chicago and sell Waukesha water there. Local residents, seeing the plan as a threat to visitors coming to Waukesha, fought the plan. The battle over the water escalated and by its conclusion involved the legislature, the governor, and a midnight confrontation between labourers and townspeople. In the end, the townspeople won and McElroy piped water from a spring in Big Bend claiming that it had come from Waukesha.